S.A. offers peace talks as troop pull-out starts

Press, 10 January 1984, Page 8

S.A. offers peace talks as troop pull-out starts

NZPA-AP Johannesburg The South African Government said yesterday that it was withdrawing its troops from Angola and asserted that the 34-day operation had smashed plans by black nationalist guerrillas to launch an offensive in the territory of South-West Africa (Namibia).

The Defence Minister, General Magnus Malan, made the announcement, but also said that his troops would invade Angola again regardless of the consequences whenever it was considered necessary.

Genera! Malan said that the operation had chased 1000 guerrillas of the SouthWest African People’s Organisation out of southern Angola and more than 300 guerrillas and Angolan soldiers had been killed. Twenty-one South African soldiers had been killed in the invasion that struck as far north as Lubango, 260 km inside Angola, he said. Pretoria also tentatively offered direct peace talks with the guerrillas. The Foreign Minister, Mr Roelof Botha, said that he would be prepared to allow direct talks between a delegation headed by the Ad-ministrator-General of Namibia and S.W.A.P.O. A South African offer last month of a 30-day truce from January 31 has been positively received by S.W.A.P.O. and Angola, but both sides have set mutually unacceptable conditions for a cease-fire. In a letter to the United Nations last week S.W.A.P.O’s leader, Sam Nujoma, asked the SecretaryGeneral, Mr Javier Perez de Cuellar, to arrange a

truce through direct talks with Pretoria. Political observers noted that Mr Botha’s offer had said that Pretoria would be represented at any talks through the AdministratorGeneral, Mr Willie van Niekerk, a South African appointee, and that that might not be acceptable to S.W.A.P.O. which might demand to talk directly to senior South African Cabinet Ministers and officials.

They called the offer an important psychological breakthrough after declarations in the past by South Africa that it would never talk directly to S.W.A.P.O. “It recognises S.W.A.P.O.’s staying power as a political and fighting force and the indications that their political influence in Namibia is growing," said Andre du Pisani, a senior political science lecturer at the University of South Africa.

The observers said that S.W.A.P.O.’s strength could be seen from the fact that despite high casualties in annual combat with better-

equipped South African forces it never appeared to be short of guerrillas and its leadership structure remained intact.

S.W.A.P.O. has fought a sporadic bush war for 17 years with South African troops along the territory’s northern border with Angola.

South Africa refuses to consider Statehood for Namibia unless some 20,000 to 30,000 Cubans — called “Soviet surrogates” by Pretoria — leave Angola. The demand, backed by the United States, has been a main obstacle for an independence plan drawn up under United Nations auspices. Underlying Pretoria’s concern over Namibia is a fear that independence could bring guerrilla war to the borders of South Africa. Mr Botha said of the Angolan fighting: “If this becomes the principle, we will be next. We must take a stand now or the conflict will be much greater later on.”